Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.

Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.

Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household.

Joy mingled with sadness, even with grief, is the deepest human joy. It winds itself about the soul with indescribable sweetness, with a dim but unerring sense for what will some day be born of it.

All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.

It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.

Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.

Language makes infinite use of finite media.

How a person masters his or her fate is more important than what that fate is.

It is usually more important how a man meets his fate than what it is.